Kahn-Harris has had several previous commentaries on ME/CFS published in the Guardian.
Here's one from May 2008:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w7wJAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=Keith+Kahn-Harris+ME/CFS&source=bl&ots=Hxg2ABobaB&sig=ACfU3U0rb0ZQVzmeGTLlmY2nqadJ9binZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiI6_2Qqpv5AhVIecAKHdncC9YQ6AF6BAgTEAM#v=onepage&q=Keith Kahn-Harris ME/CFS&f=false
Another from January 2009:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/the-politics-of-me-me-me/
The politics of ME, ME, ME
David Hayes Keith Kahn-Harris
-----------------
You'll need to scroll down to the heading:
A medical parallel
"A dedicated group of activists has committed itself to the exposure of any trace of psychosocial bias. The campaign is relentless. On message-boards, blogs and other websites, any accommodation with psychs or deviation from this fight is instantly attacked. Any ambiguity or error in the statements of members of ME charities and the medical establishment is pounced on, deconstructed and treated as sinister. Lengthy, minutely detailed “dossiers” are compiled and presented with an accusatory seriousness.
"An indication of where this leads is suggested by a blog such as
ME Agenda. Over the last few months, many of its posts have concerned accusations of “betrayal” at the Countess of Mar, the patron of a number of ME charities who has apparently “gone over to the other side”; other posts have consisted of an impenetrable series of claims and counter-claims surrounding the actions of the chair of the Peterborough M.E. & CFS Self Help Group. To the outsider, such controversies are bewildering or irrelevant. They exist as a self-enclosed world in which the real issues surrounding ME have degenerated into a Mobius strip of controversy. Whoever might or might not be “right”, the real need to move forward in addressing a terrible condition is all but forgotten.
"
A politics beyond solipsism
"The politics of ME - the illness - demonstrates that the insular internet-driven combat that influences so many arguments over the middle east are now replicated in other fields. People equipped with the requisite background or expertise - for example, those few who (like one of us) are both committed Jews and persons with ME - might have the knowledge necessary to understand the political contours of these two particular controversies. But in the huge number of other controversies where an individual's knowledge is more limited, the possibility of understanding, being persuaded by, or much less participating in them is much reduced if and when they descend into internet-driven cliquishness and circular backbiting. The day may be fast approaching when all politics will look like the middle east - and the only responses available will be either to join in the maelstrom of bickering or (more likely) to shrug one's shoulders and switch off.
"The democratising possibilities of the internet are in the process of speeding the degeneration of the public sphere into a proliferation of insular nodes, each fighting a war that can never be won. Battles cannot be won on the net nor can they be lost. What remains is a solipsistic politics of ME, ME, ME: my views, my truths, my facts, my pain, my anger. Convincing others and changing the world is forgotten in favour of the perpetuation of one's own perspective.
"It would be a mistake to look back at politics before the internet age as a prelapsarian idyll. But new realities create new problems as well as solving old ones. What is needed is a political model that can beging to redress the rise of solipsistic micropolitics; one that emphasises connection, self-critique and cool, considered analysis. What is needed is a different kind of technology that retains the internet's openness to participation but without the tendency to push activists and driven individuals towards self-righteous isolation. What is needed are tools for dialogue rather than tools for the proliferation of disconnected voices (see “
How to talk about things we know nothing about”, 21 February 2008). The message-board and the comment-thread rarely encourage users to listen to each other, to share deeper (which usually means more complex) feelings rather than shouting at each other. To be sure, the possibilities for dialogue are there in the technology but the temptations of monologue usually prove too tempting."
etc.
(
ME agenda is one of my old sites and I took issue with him over his views. Ironically, he did himself get involved in an impenetrable to outsiders issue that he wrote about at length online, on his own platform, which if memory serves related to the academic institution he was working for and which might also have been viewed as "micropolitics" to outsiders.
In the end I gave up on him.)
